The One Laptop Per Child foundation is being sued over its XO laptop keyboard design by the Nigerian-owned, Massachusetts-based firm, Lagos Analysis Corp.
Lagos claims the non-profit illegally reverse-engineered their software drivers to make the OLPC keypad more accent mark friendly to foreign fingers.
The initial copyright …

419 - I once got one which went (something) like this...

Dear SIR,

My name is Mbutu Mwezi, and I am the head of the Irish Football Association (IFA). As you will no doubt be aware from Sky News, several of our players were recently killed in a coach crash in Equitorial Guinea, whilst on their way to play against Guinea's reknowed international team. Despite missing our goalkeeper, full back, left winger, three strikers and a mascot, we still managed to triumph 11-0.

In honour of our fallen legends, the Equitorial Guinean Government agreed to pay compensation to their families, to the amount of USD$100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [ONE HUNDRED MILLION BILLION BILLION BILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS], or approximately EUR11.45 [ELEVEN EUROES FORTY FIVE CENTS]. Unfortunately it transpires that all seven tragic individuals were childless Dublin orphans, grown up in the squalor of the fifties with no shoes, and not so much as a piece of coal to their name. And also there are no beneficiaries to speak of.

The FUNDS now currently reside in a suspense account in Malabo, in a little bank just off the main square, next to a cafe and a shop which sells string.

It is in the strictest confidence THAT I now tell you my plan. Since you share a surname with one of the deceased (O'Doherty - that's you, right?), it may be possible to make a claim using your details to recover the lost amount. If you are willing to assist me with this plan, you will be rewarded with 30% of the total AMOUNT.

I implore you to help me, in the memory of these noble souls who died doing what they loved best - drinking whiskey on a bus.

How do you get an o with a dot under it...

Isn't the truth obvious?

It just seems so obvious to me. Nigerians don't _WANT_ the OLPC laptops. So why ship anything there? While at it, do the rest of the world a favour, and cut the landlines aswell (internet and telephone), and minelay the border. And please start shutting down ANY satellite phone found to be operating inside Nigeria's borders. It should reduce the amount of frauds and scams worldwide by an order of magnitude. If they don't want to get a chance to let the children learn somethin other than what the rest of the world considers illegal activities, then let them teach their activities and STAY INSIDE THEIR BORDERS!.

Goes back to at least 1980

"Plausible" excuse...

It's to provide the Nigerian government with a "plausible" excuse for dropping the OLPC and going with the Intel Classmate solution instead... expect an annoucement from them shortly explaining that they can't go with the OLPC as it may infringe on someones "precioussss" IP...

The key layout is the same, but I fail to see the patent issue

Okay, so the OLPC uses the same key layout for some symbols. Is that stealing or simply common sense? After all if that keyboard layout is prevalent, or even defined by international standards then I see no issue.

As for having a couple of buttons to reach extra key combos - well duh. That is so obvious and has had such a long history of prior art that I fail to see anything that could be patented. For example my UK keyboard allows me to push Alt Gr + 4 to get a Euro symbol. I'm sure I could also hold down Alt + the octal code on the numeric keypad to do the same. There is nothing innovative whatsoever about a keyboard that maps a few more characters onto a button that is Alt Gr in all but name. Fact is that extra keys are not even a new phenomena. Even the humble ZX Spectrum keyboard was overloaded with special keys, and the Shift key is the granddaddy of them all.

This sounds like an absurd patent even as many patents go. Even assuming there is a patent. The OLPC should point out all this and let the complainant waste their money if they really must pursuing legal action.

Have they no shame?

If the OLPC were some form of Microsoftian enterprise bent on world-domination through capitalizing on revenue from sales....then maybe, just maybe this Nigerian firm would be justified in trying to swindle money out of the OLPC foundation...but this IS NOT the case! Maybe the rest of the decent folk out there should counter-sue the Nigerian company for a horrendous lack of ethics and just plain decency...but I guess it's too much to expect these day!

Gramer Alert!!

[quote]"One Laptop per Child, a non-profit educational organization, has hear that Lagos Analysis Corp. (LANCOR) has sued OLPC in Nigeria, but OLPC has not seen any legal papers related to the alleged suit at this time,"[/quote]

Sounds (i.e. reads), like the Author could use a free OLPC too.

No barring for any mis-understanding between Her Majesties English and the ~supposedly~ more common American English, but shouldn't that be read back as:

"One Laptop per Child, a non-profit educational organization, has hear**d** that Lagos Analysis Corp. (LANCOR) has sued OLPC in Nigeria, but OLPC has not seen any legal papers related to the alleged suit at this time,"

I mean thousands of Kids come here daily, and have to put up with bad gramer!!

Giving someone a fish

It all comes back to the question of giving someone a fish vs. teaching them to fish. Or in Microsoft's case: selling someone a fish, vs. teaching them to fish and then selling them expensive proprietary bait for the rest of their life.

How patriotic

@Mark

My point is that the amount of educational supplies you can with $200 in the Third World is far more valuable and useful that a crappy wind-up computer that will get sold for food, stolen or broken. Not to say the educational supplies might not get stolen, as another poster pointed out, but a computer is a far more juicey target.

@Mark

I can buy a hell of a lot of books, papers, pens, pencils using the same money it costs to buy a laptop. Ask any publisher of educational material and they will gladly eat the added profit margin of educational books for a little good PR.

But then I wouldn't have the chuckle of seeing the press release of some kid in a small hut pedal away in order to generate the electricity he needs to power his laptop. And who wants to miss a self-loving idealistic techie like Negoropante miss out on his Nobel prize.

LOL bosshog

ye gods...

This layout goes back way further than the Atari ST, to the European release of the IBM XT if not PC itself. Part of it is virtually identical to the British PC layout. I would be very surprised if a number of keyboard layouts 'historically' used in Nigeria itself were actually identical. Certainly there must have been keyboards featuring similar concepts in the country for decades if computers were used to produce or label anything for shipment to the neighboring French-speaking countries.

Perhaps the Lagos company is 'merely' looking for publicity. I wonder if OLPC ever will see any legal papers from it.